共和党中的保守民粹主义者可能会让你相信，美国没有两个主要政党，而是华盛顿的一群政客无视美国人民的愿望。在最近对本党成员的攻击中，这一派系采用了一个词，以轻蔑的方式将所谓的叛教共和党人与民主党人联系起来:“统一党。“佐治亚州众议员马乔里·泰勒·格林使用此描述符上周为她辩护要求共和党取消共和党发言人迈克·约翰逊上任。格林说约翰逊，可以说是最保守的演讲者在现代，他监督了众议院民主党人“完全彻底的投降”。她继续说道，没有任何改变，“我们是一个坚持自我毁灭的单一政党。”
在两党就立法进行谈判之际，格林对民主党议长进行了严厉批评提供新的援助在乌克兰与俄罗斯的战争中，这只是共和党内部更具民粹主义叛乱分子和更传统的保守派之间持续冲突的最新一幕。先前的冲突已经展开众议院议长也支出账单资助联邦政府。即使格林坚持认为这些妥协“极大地激怒了我们的共和党基础，并使他们没有理由投票支持共和党众议院多数党”，但它们似乎更能反映出她自己的派系与共和党其他成员的不合拍，而不是共和党整体的温和转变。
事实上，与美国现代历史上的任何时候相比，我们当前的政治时刻可以说离一党制更远了。根据他们的投票记录，国会民主党和共和党成员越来越两极化，国会共和党中更温和和更保守的派别也以类似的速度向右移动。与此同时，民调显示，与过去相比，美国人现在更有可能认为两党各不相同，这表明公众普遍认为华盛顿没有一党独大。尽管在一些领域两党分歧较小，但更广泛的一党制主张与我们高度极化和分裂的政治时代不符。
国会两党之间的分歧比以往任何时候都大
对单党主张的第一次打击是国会中的政党逐渐疏远了在过去的50年里。DW-NOMINATE的第一个维度，这是一个常用的指标VoteView.com这衡量了自由派或保守派成员的投票记录，表明两党之间的差距已经大大扩大。从-1(最自由)到1(最保守)的范围来看，在二战后的头几十年里，众议院和参议院中民主党和共和党的平均差距约为0.5个单位。但今天，这一差距约为0.9个单位——接近规模的一半。
这一转变是由一系列事态发展促成的。20世纪中叶，各方意识形态排序较低字体许多民主党人，尤其是南方的民主党人，实际上投票记录更保守，而一些共和党人在一些问题上的观点更自由。这在两党之间造成了某种程度的意识形态重叠。事实上，在20世纪50年代初，美国政治科学协会非常担心关于两党的观点有多混乱，它现在臭名昭著地敦促进行变革更大的美国政坛两极分化!
然而，从20世纪70年代开始，国会中普通民主党人和共和党人之间的距离开始变宽，这种趋势没有停止。共和党成员越来越保守，尤其是在20世纪90年代，其中包括保守党领导的共和党接管政权1994年，民主党成为众议院的一员，而随着该党保守派南翼的削弱及其成员的增加，民主党变得更加自由变得更加多元化。许多促成因素可能起了作用两极分化加剧，包括选民中越来越大的种族和文化分歧,改变来源关于竞选资金和党派媒体的影响力。极化并不是华盛顿独有的，或者，党派分歧已经成长为各州首府全国各地，也是。
另一个潜在因素是两党竞争激烈的政治环境很有可能赢得全国大选。在真正掌握权力的情况下，议员们通过更具对抗性、团队优先的方式加剧了国会的党派冲突，这种方式试图强调两党之间的分歧。这一点可以通过增强的政党团结在国会投票和更多地使用试图迫使反对党在即将到来的竞选中投票的“信息传递”法案。
进一步挖掘DW提名数据，意识形态领域的国会共和党成员已经转向右翼——这与一种说法相反，即一个明显不那么保守的共和党派系已经从他们党内的其他人那里分离出来，与民主党人组成了一个单一政党。为了证明这一点，我将每个政党的众议院成员分为三部分——最保守/自由的三分之一，中间的三分之一和最不保守/自由的三分之一——然后取每个群体的中间意识形态分数。在下面的图表中，你可以看到过去四十年来更广泛的共和党右倾趋势并不局限于最保守的成员，而是在整个党内发生了明显的转变(参议院的波动也类似)。
从1981-83年的第97届国会到目前的第118届国会，根据DW-nomine的计算，共和党中最不保守的三分之一向右移动了近0.2个单位，与中间的三分之一大致相同，而最保守的三分之一向右移动了近0.25个单位。如果保守程度较低的共和党人一直与共和党决裂，与民主党人合作，我们预计至少会看到共和党中最不保守的三分之一成员的右倾运动明显减少。相比之下，众议院民主党人主要看到党内中间派和最不自由的三分之一成员中的左翼运动，这在一定程度上对应于更保守的南方成员的减少。*
美国人更倾向于认为政党是不同的
公众也并非不知道两党的观点是如何产生分歧的;事实上，美国人比近代史上任何时候都更有可能将它们看得如此清晰。以皮尤研究中心近四十年的民意调查为例它的前身该调查询问受访者，他们是否认为每个政党的主张明显不同。1987年，只有25%的美国人说他们看到了差异“很大”，45%的人说“相当大”，25%的人说“几乎没有”快进到2023年:绝对多数，54 %,说他们观察到差异“很大”，而35%的人说“相当大”只有10%的人认为“几乎没有”区别。
现在，皮尤的民调并不总是显示两党之间的感知差异呈上升趋势。举个例子，在联邦预算僵局中在1995年10月——也就是导致政府关门那年11月，美国人更有可能看到两党之间的巨大差异，从1994年7月的23%上升到34%。在皮尤2023年的最新民意调查中，认为差异很大的比例比2021年的59%略有下降。然而，总的来说，在过去36年中，认为两党之间存在大量或相当多分歧的美国人的比例明显上升——这一数据与公众认为一个广泛的单一政党在管理国家的想法不一致。
这并不是说一些美国人不觉得自己被任何一个党派所代表。在皮尤的最近的调查2023年，25%的人表示，两党都没有“很好地代表像他们这样的人的利益。”与强烈认同民主党或共和党的人相比，那些对某个政党认同度较低或仅倾向于某个政党的人也明显不太可能察觉到两党之间的“大量”差异。但对两党的负面或冷淡情绪并不意味着这些美国人将他们视为类似的实体:不到10%的弱势政党识别者和约15%的独立学习者表示，两党之间“几乎没有任何”差异(皮尤没有报告不倾向于某个政党的独立人士的数据，这是一个小团体).
其他调查也发现，与过去相比，美国人现在更多地看到了两党之间的关键差异。在1952年至1976年的总统选举年中，美国全国选举研究中只有大约一半的受访者说有重要的区别两大政党之间。从1980年到2000年，这一数字上升到60%左右或更高，然后从2004年开始跃升至75%以上。2020年，高达90%的人表示两党之间存在重要分歧。
越来越多的独特性和意识形态分类——共和党更保守，民主党更自由——也让美国人更清楚两党的立场。在1960年至1992年的总统选举中，53%至63%的选民接受ANES调查的人称其中一个政党更保守，该党是共和党，而27%至32%的受访者表示两党大致相同或他们不知道。到2020年，79%的人认为共和党是更保守的政党，只有10%的人认为两党相同或不知道(11%的人认为民主党是更保守的政党)。
那首老歌
实际上，保守派共和党人今天提出的单党批评只是两大政党“主流”之外的团体对华盛顿政治的一长串抱怨中的最新一例。在1968年的总统选举中，种族隔离主义的第三党候选人乔治·华莱士说没有民主党和共和党总统候选人之间“微不足道的差别”。描述民主党和共和党联合的“一党”标签实际上似乎已经起源于2000年总统竞选在左翼第三政党候选人、绿党提名人拉尔夫·纳德的支持者中。史蒂夫·班农曾是前总统唐纳德·特朗普的顾问，他希望开展MAGA运动来克服他所认为的一党独大由两党成员和媒体组成。
但在当今高度党派化和两极化的政治环境中，两大政党之间的差距使得单党主张难以下咽，尽管民主党和共和党确实可以说有一些共同点。举个例子，一项研究发现国会中的民主党人和共和党人在1997年至2018年期间提出了类似支出水平的立法。在一系列问题领域，两党在医疗保健立法支出提案上仅存在显著差异，民主党人希望增加支出。
可能困扰共和党最保守的国会派系的现实是，至少通常需要一些两党合作在华盛顿完成任务。一项研究发现2010年代中期投票通过立法的联盟几乎与20世纪70年代一样由两党组成。事实证明，国会中的多数党往往不得不至少依靠少数党的一些支持来通过立法。事实证明，直到今天，获得这种支持对于多数党通过更多议程至关重要:尽管现在政党在意识形态上更加团结，但多数党在单方面通过议程方面并没有变得更加成功——自20世纪70年代以来，其成功率几乎没有变化。
我们在本届国会中看到了这一点，众议院共和党人的微弱多数和持续的党内分歧使得历史上的困难对多数党来说如此操作。这使得众议院最近通过的大多数立法都是两党多数的产物，如约翰逊任期内的普遍做法在暂停规则的情况下通过法案——这一程序需要三分之二的支持，需要民主投票把事情做好，同时不顾强硬保守派的反对，让这些法案得以通过。
然而，正是右翼众议院共和党人促成了这一局面。该集团的成员迫使派对进行了15轮2023年1月选举凯文·麦卡锡为议长，去年10月煽动麦卡锡下台，现在又威胁要除掉约翰逊。尽管几乎没有证据表明存在真正的单一政党，但具有讽刺意味的是，共和党的右翼只是迫使自己的领导层与民主党合作，并进一步证明在国会推动立法需要一定程度的两党合作。
脚注
*需要明确的是，DW提名是不是完美的工具用于衡量国会的意识形态观点。例如，国会似乎经历了不对称的两极分化，因为在过去几十年中，共和党比民主党更偏向右翼。然而，有可能DW-NOMINATE的左右维度并没有带来一些向左的民主运动。小队成员由大约八名进步民主党人组成的联盟并不属于最左倾的阵营由于实例当他们投票反对他们的政党不进步时足够地.
The far right claims there's a 'uniparty' in Washington. Reality suggests otherwise.
Conservative populists in the Republican Party might have you believe that there aren't two major parties in the United States, but one conglomeration of politicians in Washington who are ignoring the desires of the American people. In its latest attacks against members of its own party, this faction has embraced a term that disparagingly links supposedly apostate Republicans to Democrats across the aisle: "uniparty." Georgia Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greeneused this descriptorlast week to justify hercalls for the GOP to removeRepublican Speaker Mike Johnson from office. Greene said that Johnson,arguably the most conservative speakerin modern times, had overseen "a complete and total surrender to" Democrats in the House. Without a change, she continued, "we are a Uniparty that is hell-bent on remaining on the path of self-inflicted destruction."
Greene's castigation of her party's speaker, which came amid bipartisan negotiations over legislationto provide fresh assistanceto Ukraine in its war with Russia, is just the latest episode in an ongoing conflict within the GOP between its more populist-insurgent and more traditionally conservative wings. Previous clashes have unfolded overthe House speakershipas well asspending billsto fundthe federal government. Even if Greene insists that these compromises have "angered our Republican base so much and given them very little reason to vote for a Republican House majority," they seem to be more reflective of how out of step her own faction is from the rest of its party than of any moderate shift among Republicans as a whole.
In fact, our current political moment is arguably farther away from having anything resembling a uniparty than at any other time in modern U.S. history. Based on their voting records, Democratic and Republican members of Congress have become increasingly polarized, and both the more moderate and more conservative wings of the congressional GOP have moved to the right at similar rates. Meanwhile, polling suggests that Americans now are more likely to view the parties as distinct from one another than in the past, an indication that the public broadly doesn't see a uniparty in Washington. Although there are areas where the parties are less divided, the broader uniparty claim is at odds with our highly polarized and divided political era.
Congressional parties are farther apart than ever
A first strike against the uniparty claim is the evidence that the parties in Congresshave steadily drifted farther apartideologically over the past 50 years. The first dimension of DW-NOMINATE, a commonly used metric fromVoteView.comthat measures how liberal or conservative members' voting records are, demonstrates how the gulf between the parties has widened tremendously. On a scale ranging from -1 (most liberal) to 1 (most conservative), the average Democrat and average Republican in the House and Senate were roughly 0.5 units apart in the first couple of decades after World War II. But today, that gap is about 0.9 units — nearly half the scale.
A number of developments have played into this shift. During the middle of the 20th century, the partieswere less ideologically sorted: Many Democrats, especially in the South, actually had more conservative voting records, while some Republicans had more liberal views on a number of issues. This created some degree of ideological overlap among the two parties. In fact, in the early 1950s the American Political Science Associationwas so concernedabout how muddled the parties' views were that it now-infamously urged changes to bring aboutgreaterpolarization in American politics!
Starting in the 1970s, however, the distance between the average Democrat and Republican in Congressbegan to widen, a trend thathas not stopped. GOP members grew more consistently conservative, especially in the 1990s — which includedthe conservative-led GOP takeoverof the House in 1994 — while the Democrats became more liberal as the party's conservative Southern wing diminished and its membershipbecame more racially diverse. Many contributing factorsmay have played a rolein increased polarization, includinggrowing racial and cultural divisions among the electorate,changing sourcesofcampaign moneyand theinfluence of partisan media outlets. Polarizationisn't unique to Washington, either, as the partisan dividehas grown instate capitalsaround the country, too.
Another potential ingredient is a highly competitive political environment in which both partiesstand a good chance of winning national elections. With a real shot at holding power, members have intensified partisan conflict in Congress via a more confrontational, team-first approach that seeks to emphasize differences between the parties. This can be seen throughincreased party unityin congressional voting and agreater use of"messaging" bills that try to force the opposition party into casting votes that can be used against it in the upcoming campaign.
Digging further into the DW-NOMINATE data, Republican members of Congress across the ideological board have moved to the right — which runs contrary to the claim that a faction of notably less conservative Republicans have separated from the rest of their party to form a uniparty with Democrats. To show this, I broke up each party's House membership into thirds — the most conservative/liberal third, the middle third and the least conservative/liberal third — and then took the median ideological score for each group. In the chart below, you can see that the broader GOP's rightward trend over the past four decades wasn't isolated to its most conservative members, but that a clear shift happened throughout the party (swings in the Senate were similar).
From the 97th Congress in 1981-83 to the current 118th Congress, the least conservative third of the Republican Party moved nearly 0.2 units to the right by DW-NOMINATE's reckoning, about the same as the middle third, while the most conservative third moved right by almost 0.25. If less conservative Republicans consistently broke with the GOP to work with Democrats, we would expect to see — at the very least — notably less rightward movement among the least conservative third of the GOP. By comparison, House Democrats mainly saw movement to the left among those in the middle and least liberal third of the party, which corresponded in part to the reduction in more conservative Southern members.*
Americans more likely to view the parties as distinct
The public is not ignorant of how the parties' views have moved apart either; in fact, Americans are more likely to see them as clearly distinct than at any time in recent history. Take nearly four decades of polling by the Pew Research Center andits predecessor, which has asked respondents if they view what each party stands for as notably different. In 1987, only 25 percent of Americanssaid they saw"a great deal" of difference, 45 percent said "a fair amount" and 25 percent said "hardly any." Fast forward to 2023: An outright majority, 54 percent,said they observed"a great deal" of difference, while 35 percent said "a fair amount." Just 10 percent said they saw "hardly any" distinction.
Now, Pew's polling hasn't always shown an upward trajectory in perceived differences between the parties. For instance,amid an impasse over the federal budgetin October 1995 — whichresulted in a government shutdownthat November — Americans became more likely to see a great deal of difference between the parties, going from 23 percent in July 1994 to 34 percent. And the share who saw a great deal of difference in Pew's most recent poll in 2023 was down slightly from 59 percent in 2021. Yet broadly speaking, the share of Americans who perceive a great deal or a fair amount of differences between the parties has clearly grown in the past 36 years — data at odds with the idea that the public sees one broad uniparty running the country.
This is not to say that some Americans don't feel represented by either party. In Pew'smost recent surveyin 2023, 25 percent said that neither party "represented the interests of people like them well." Those who identified less strongly with or only leaned toward a party were also significantly less likely to perceive "a great deal" of differences between the two parties than those who identified strongly as Democrats or Republicans. But negative or lukewarm feelings toward both parties doesn't mean these Americans see them as similar entities: Less than 10 percent of the weak party identifiers and around 15 percent of independent leaners said there were "hardly any" differences between the parties (Pew didn't report data for independents who didn't lean toward a party,which is a small group).
Other surveys have also found that Americans see key differences between the parties more today than in the past. In presidential election years from 1952 to 1976, only about half of respondents in the American National Election Studysaid there were important differencesbetween the two major parties. That figure rose to around 60 percent or more from 1980 to 2000, and then jumped above 75 percent beginning in 2004. In 2020, a whopping 90 percent said the parties had important differences between them.
Increased distinctiveness and ideological sorting — with Republicans being more conservative, Democrats more liberal — have also made Americans more aware of where the parties stand. In presidential elections from 1960 to 1992, between 53 percent and 63 percent ofthose surveyed by the ANESsaid that one of the parties was more conservative, and that that party was the GOP, while between 27 to 32 percent of respondents said the parties were about the same or that they didn't know. By 2020, 79 percent identified the Republican Party as the more conservative party and only 10 percent said the parties were the same or didn't know (11 percent said the Democrats were the more conservative party).
That same old song
Really, the uniparty critique lodged by conservative Republicans today is just the latest in a long line of complaints about politics in Washington from groups outside the "mainstream" of the two major political parties. In the 1968 presidential election, segregationist third-party contender George Wallacesaid there wasn't"a dime's worth of difference" between the Democratic and Republican presidential candidates. The "uniparty" label to describe a conglomeration of Democrats and Republicans actually seems to haveoriginated in the 2000 presidential raceamong supporters of a left-wing third-party candidate, Green Party nominee Ralph Nader. And Steve Bannon, once an adviser for former President Donald Trump, wanted the MAGA movementto overcome what he saw as a unipartymade up of members of both parties and the media.
But in today's highly partisan and polarized political environment, the gap between the two major parties makes the uniparty claim tough to swallow, even though Democrats and Republicans do arguably share a few commonalities. For instance,one study foundthat Democrats and Republicans in Congress proposed legislation with similar levels of spending between 1997 and 2018. Across a range of issue areas, the parties only differed significantly in their spending proposals in health care legislation, with Democrats wanting more spending.
What may be troubling the GOP's most conservative congressional faction is the reality that at leastsome bipartisanship is usually requiredto get things done in Washington.One study foundthat the coalitions that voted to pass legislation in the mid-2010s were almost as bipartisan in their makeup as those in the 1970s. As it turns out, the majority party in Congress has often had to rely on at least some support from the minority party to pass legislation. Getting that kind of support has proved to be critical to passing more of the majority party's agenda even to this day: Although parties are more ideologically cohesive now, the majority party hasn't become more successful in unilaterally passing its agenda — its success rate has barely changed since the 1970s.
We've seen this in the current Congress, where House Republicans' narrow majority and ongoing intraparty disagreementshave made it historically difficultfor the majority partyto operate as such. That's made most of the recently passed legislation in the House the product of bipartisan majorities, as illustrated bythe common practice during Johnson's tenureof passing bills under suspension of the rules — a procedure that requires two-thirds support,necessitating Democratic votesto get things done while also allowing these bills to get to the floor despite opposition from hardline conservatives.
Yet it's right-wing House Republicans who've helped bring about this situation. Members of that blocforced the party to take 15 roundsto elect Speaker Kevin McCarthy in January 2023, instigated the ousting of McCarthy last October and now threaten to get rid of Johnson, too. While there is little evidence for an actual uniparty, the GOP's right flank has ironically only forced its own leadership to work with Democrats and further proved that some degree of bipartisanship is required to move legislation forward in Congress.
Footnote
*To be clear, DW-NOMINATE isnot a perfect toolfor measuring ideological views in Congress. For example, Congress appears to have experienced asymmetrical polarization because the GOP has moved farther to the right than Democrats have moved to the left over the past few decades. Yet it's possible that DW-NOMINATE's left-right dimension hasn't picked up some Democratic movement to the left.Members of The Squad, a group of around eight progressive Democrats, don't rank among the most left-leaningdue to instanceswhen they voted against their party for not being progressiveenough.
